Teaching the Lean Launchpad – in Iran!

So this just happened: I was invited to hold a lecture at the Qazvin Islamic Azad University (QIAU), one of the most successful and private universities in Iran and one of the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the world according to Wikipedia.

After thinking long and hard about what I should focus on at such a fantastic teaching opportunity, I settled on the introductory part of the Lean Launchpad curriculum called “What We Now Know“. I think it gives the most bang for the bucks – the chance to introduce anybody to what a startup is, what we have been doing wrong in building them, why and what to do instead in a short, comprehensive and actionable lecture.

UPDATE: The presentation was featured as Slides of the Day on LinkedIn SlideShare September 11th 2015. Which makes it my 4thpresentationfeatured in less than 4 months. :)

Hanging with students

The university’s tech incubator

Inspecting some of the record breaking feats made by engineers at the university

The campus is so massive, they told me it’s the largest in the world – and judging from the amount of land I saw, I believe it

Lessons Learned

No, as a Norwegian citizen I was not interrogated on arrival (super easy visa process, almost no waiting) and no, I didn’t have a chaperone of any sort (I’m probably not important enough anyways) although be advised that your experience as a British, Canadian or American citizen may vary

Something like 50% of Iran’s population of 78 million is under the age of 30 (think about the implications)

Students preferred me speaking in American English instead of British English

People here have actually heard about The Lean Startup, and are practicing it, albeit perhaps maybe not yet fully

People are super eager to learn, learn, learn

There’s an abundance of tech talent in Iran, lots of great universities (although I’m told curricula is lagging behind)

Posing, posing, posing – The male contingency of students who showed me around campus and the city of Qazvin (in all fairness, not shown are the girls who was also a part of this group, turning camera-shy when out in public, a post-revolution cultural thing I gather)